The Coronation of the White Queen
by roisaber
Summary: With Oliver and his friends gone, Queen Cassiopeia finds herself alone in her throne room once again. What can she do to restore Nazcaä to its former glory?


**The Coronation of the White Queen**

After Oliver and his friends left, Queen Cassiopeia, the White Witch restored, set to the difficult task of maneuvering the Ivory Tower back to its proper home on the small continent of Nazcaä. The crystals that provided thrust were just as responsive as they'd been the day she set into the sky, but her skills were rusty from millennia of disuse. After hours of effort trying to land the great citadel properly on its capstan, she was covered in sweat and her cheeks were slick with the tears of frustration. Each compensation was either too shallow or too deep and she overcompensated in futile attempts to correct it. Just when she thought she could endure no more, the great electromagnets of Ara Memoriæ engaged, and guided the castle down into its docking ports at less than three feet per second. A resounding clang echoed through the broad, empty passageways and then it was over.

"I'm so glad that's over with!" the Queen of Nazcaä gushed in relief.

But there was no one to answer her except echoes of her own voice.

"I'm… alone, again," she realized.

She pushed that thought out of her mind and fired up the ancient but pristine vacuum tube computer controllable through a panel in the throne room. Normally she'd have an operator to work the intricate contraption and it put a painful strain on her memory to have to work the machine herself. It was harmonized with crystals all over the continent, which should offer her a series of status reports so that she determine just how much work remained to restore her kingdom to its rightful glory. The results were not encouraging.

Apart from herself, there was not a single sentient creature on the entire continent. The mist had made colonization impossible and over the vast length of years Nazcaä had been overrun by monsters. Many of the sensors were offline – broken, underwater, or buried. She reviewed the readouts with growing despair.

"No!" she suddenly shouted, her voice ringing back at her and sounding tinny in her ears. "After all that has happened, I shan't allow myself to go astray once again."

She decided to fill the growing void in her heart with a full tour of her castle. Alarmed, the Queen realized she had not left the upper story complex of the Ivory Tower - properly known as Tel Nazcaä - in hundreds of years. Cassiopeia had been a self-made prisoner, and she had confined herself to her throne room, personal quarters, and the guardian council chamber for more time than she cared to even imagine. She ran her fingers along the controls to the tessellator, the muscles in her fingers remembering what her mind did not. She unsealed all the tessellators in the building with an authorization code she hadn't used since she'd originally lost her heart.

The first room she visited was the engineering deck. The Ivory Tower was a city unto itself, capable of movement since ancient times but generally left docked at Ara Memoriæ. Queen Cassiopeia was astonished to discover that everything was as pristine as the day she had "left" it. Robots did more than simply guard the citadel – they also cleaned and repaired equipment and, indeed, one another. Even the recent aerial bombardment failed to leave a mark on the adamantium-mithril alloys that made up the shell of the great Nazcaän capital. Nazcaän script, now unreadable to all but a few of the people of Kuni, listed load capacities on the vast array of wiring and piping that allowed the city to function. Everything was in perfect working order. It was simply unoccupied.

The same went for the main deck that hosted the central square of town. Empty shops were in flawless condition as if just waiting for the first tenants to arrive to vend their wares; empty houses and apartments lined the square with their cold, twinkling lights. Queen Cassiopeia shuddered at the memory. This sterile facility was once home to a riot of colors, where shopkeepers haggled over pricing with customers, but now it was a beautiful graveyard. No amount of lighting could hide the fact the city was dead, and if the White Queen did not come up with a strategy for repopulating Tel Nazcaä – it would remain dead forever.

"How many people wish to come to the domain of a Queen who has murdered her subjects?" she asked herself sadly, her voice bouncing back to her off the walls as though in accusation.

Queen Cassiopeia thought back to the fate of Xanadu. It was so easy to kill with Manna, and the power had been… intoxicating. There were no swords, no airship strikes, no blood, no great battles and no heroes – just cold ashen death raining down from the sky. Queen Khulan had been helpless to fight back against the impregnable Tel Nazcaä and Cassiopeia looked on with satisfaction as they died, almost to the last man. Who was left on all of Kuni who could say the name Nazcaä as though it were not a reprehensible curse? Who could say White Witch without crossing themselves afterwards?

For a brief, dangerous moment, she was tempted to summon Apus back into the world, just so she'd have someone to talk to. She quickly dismissed the notion with a flash of self-loathing. The bird represented the most condescending and arrogant part of her soul, and the heavens only knew what monstrosity he would talk her into if she brought him back into Tel Nazcaä. Instead, she carried on her inspection of the citadel. The aviaries and greenhouses were all perfectly intact, simply empty. The Observatory was operational and ready, just unoccupied.

"Of what possible worth is a queen without a kingdom?" she asked herself aloud.

But the walls of Tel Nazcaä didn't answer.

Queen Cassiopeia returned to her throne room and gazed out at the ruined landscape beyond the citadel. At the height of Nazcaä's power, the sky had been filled with airships carrying goods. Enthusiastic tourists travelled from all over the world to gawk at the sights of the great city. But now, many of the forests were dead, swallowed by landslides or starved to death by the thick mist that had made landing on the continent impossible. It would be centuries before Nazcaä returned to its proper glory and even that was only possible assuming that the strong monsters populating the land didn't destroy the last of the wooded areas that remained. Suddenly, she spied something on the far horizon beyond the southern plains, coming up from the sea.

The central computer system rang an alert. Queen Cassiopeia tried to remember the intricate series of codes and failed. Once she'd translated the computer readout into proper Nazcaän, she realized with a start that it was a ship, preparing to land in SkyblueBay. Another alert sounded and she realized with that Tel Nazcaä's automated security systems were about to give the mystery vessel a less than hospitable welcome. She swore under her breath and rapidly typed on the Nazcaän keyboard, shutting the weapons down before they could obliterate the kingdom's visitors. Grabbing a spyglass, the Queen exited onto the balcony so she could take a closer look.

With a start, she realized it was a merchant vessel from Castaway Cove. Of course, it only made sense that the curious, seafaring people would be the first to arrive on the shores of Nazcaä. They made their living as global traders and they were always on the lookout for fresh opportunities – most especially, the collection of goods and materials that were unique to each particular region. Nazcaä could be a bounty for them. Items such as ritestones were virtually exclusive to the Nazcaän continent, and would probably become desperately sought-after goods; nothing was more chic than the rare and newly available. The boat finished anchoring in the rough waters of the natural harbor, and a small crew exited on a landing craft and started making their way to Tel Nazcaä.

Queen Cassiopeia was surprised, and then realized they were probably be on their way to pay her tribute. After all, it wouldn't do to go scavenging in the lands of a most dangerous witch without first seeking her approval. She rushed into her private quarters and started getting ready. Cassiopeia, still a woman despite her royal lineage, took a hot shower to wash away the sweat generated by the difficult task of docking Tel Nazcaä with Ara Memoriæ. She dressed in a new set of royal robes, freshly cleaned and pressed by service robots. By the time she was ready, they were only a few minutes away. She waited on her throne for their arrival, and then realized that the old ways would no longer suffice for her uninhabited kingdom. She tessellated to the central foyer to greet them personally.

They knocked on the grand doors, which had been kept open in the glory days of Nazcaä, and the green-haired queen palmed them open with a keypad. If the foreign traders were surprised to see the Queen opening the doors they did a good job of hiding it, and they bowed low and, she noticed, a little nervously.

"Greetings, travelers," Cassiopeia announced in a tone of regal authority. Then she realized how foolish she sounded. "Oh, I'm so glad to see you!"

The traders, a collection of three men and one woman, looked at one another in wary surprise. One of the men stepped forward.

"Hello, Your Majesty. My name is Handel, and I'm the captain of _Queen Khulan's Revenge_."

Cassiopeia kept her face carefully blank. "Good day to you. And your companions?"

"My name is Chet," said another of the men, stepping forward. "I was a student of Sage Solomon, but last week, I had a dream telling me to present myself to the Queen of Nazcaä. I was fortunate enough to secure passage with Captain Handel."

The woman waved enthusiastically. "Hi, I'm Maria! I'm a representative of the Textiles and Metallurgy Guild!"

The third man was more taciturn. "Greetings, Your Highness. I am Smith."

"Your Majesty, we were rather hoping to discuss search and salvage rights in your kingdom," Maria said. "Reopening this continent for trade could result in a vast amount of wealth generated for Nazcaä, and for the entire world!~"

Queen Cassiopeia answered gravely. "Of the Nazcaäns, you look upon the last who remains."

Maria was undaunted. "For now. After all, materials from this land are bound to sell for a good price abroad. Anyone who treats Nazcaä as the next frontier and immigrates is bound to make a fortune by collecting and selling these goods! As a matter of fact, as a licensed representative of the Guild, I was rather hoping to open an office right here in this city. I'm sure the matter of taxes and tariffs could be solved in a mutually beneficial way."

Queen Cassiopeia was taken aback. It had been centuries, or perhaps millennia, since she'd had to consider the strange human clockwork of commerce. Mistaking the queen's caught tongue for uncertainty, Maria pressed on with her pitch.

"The Guild would be willing to offer ten thousand Guilders today for rights to open an office in Tel Nazcaä, followed by a monthly payment of ten percent of our gross revenue," Maria said. "Your Treasury could literally make thousands of Guilders per month from our organization alone, and you lose nothing but a few thousand square feet of real estate. I can't imagine a better deal, Your Highness."

"And think of the business opportunities in running safaris!" Handel added. "Hunters from all over the world will want to prove their mettle against the nastiest beasties this continent has to offer. They'll pay out the nose for a chance to hunt the legendary Starshade, and they'll be needing passage both ways by boat. Naturally, Your Highness' coffers stand to make a pretty penny off tourism revenue."

Queen Cassiopeia felt her eyes mist over, and to the astonishment of the landing party, she suddenly burst into tears.

"Y-your Highness!?" Maria asked with evident concern.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," Cassiopeia sobbed, all her years of loneliness starting to evaporate under the warm Nazcaän sun. "It all sounds so wonderful. Please, I accept all your offers, and more."

The White Witch heard another computer system ring, and she raised her spyglass to see what had triggered the proximity alert. On the horizon, she spied one vessel after another steaming towards the continent of Nazcaä. All over Kuni, people driven by greed or lust for fame or a need to escape local authorities or just a sense of adventure were leaving their hometowns, desperate to book passage to the newly liberated continent. Cassiopeia would be a queen without a kingdom no longer.


End file.
